1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, such as a copying machine, a printer, and a facsimile machine using the electrophotographic method, and a complex machine of the foregoing.
2. Description of the Related Art
In an image forming apparatus, such as a copying machine, a printer, and a facsimile machine using the electrophotographic method, and a complex machine of the foregoing, a uniformly charged photoconductor is exposed to light modulated by an image signal and a toner image is formed by developing the resulting electrostatic latent image in the developing device. The toner image is transferred onto a recording sheet and the recording sheet is discharged after the fixing processing is performed.
In order to facilitate the picking up of discharged recording sheets, for example, as is shown in FIG. 1 of JP-A-2006-8270, there is a type having a sheet discharge portion provided on the top surface of the printer main body. This sheet discharge portion is formed by sinking the sheet discharge port side, so that recording sheets are aligned at the rear end in the sheet carrying direction and stacked on the discharge portion in a stable manner. In the case of a copying machine, a facsimile machine, and the complex machine thereof, there is a need to provide an image reading device (scanner), and to meet this need, an image forming apparatus of a type called the body-inside discharge type is provided, in which the scanner is provided on the top surface of the main body, the image forming portion is provided at the lower portion, and the sheet discharge portion is provided in the middle.
For the body-inside discharge type, however, it is necessary to provide a space to enable the body-inside discharge, and the image forming apparatus naturally becomes taller, which makes the use as a desktop unit almost infeasible. Hence, as is disclosed, for example, in JP-A-2000-201257, there has been proposed an image forming apparatus in which the scanner is provided under the image forming portion and, as with the printer or the like, the sheet discharge portion formed by sinking the sheet discharge port side is provided on the top surface of the main body.
However, when the sheet discharge portion is provided on the top surface of the main body of the image forming apparatus by sinking the sheet discharge portion on the sheet discharge port side in this manner, dust readily accumulates on the discharge port side thus sunken. In some cases, dust makes a formed image dirty and printing has to be made again on a new recording sheet. Moreover, when the user tries to remove the accumulated dust, it is not easy to clean the corners on the sunken discharge port side, and the user has to use a tooth pick or the like to remove the dust.